ElijahBlue’s Techdirt Comments

Re: Re: Revenue

L.A. just rolled back the city business tax, but only after the few remaining tech-related employers in the city warned the mayor the moving trucks were on the way. If you can call yourself an internet or multimedia business with a straight face, you probably qualify for the lower tax rate.

I'm really irked that Amazon turned over the personal data on what consumers in NC bought - they shouldn't have given over any of this information, even if the names and addresses remained confidential.

How many great ideas are abandoned, bursts of inspiration are extinguished because of these abusive (and stupid) copyright, patent and trademark lawsuits? I've noticed recently that the most inane advertising slogans now bear a copyright or TM logo - slogans so dumb I can't even pull one from memory to post here. Some of the print ads I've seen recently are recycling common everyday sayings - capping the sentence with a copyright or TM mark.

RE: once a month jones for the history channel

You can find a lot of History Channel's content on Itunes, usually for $1.99 an episode, or from Netflix. Itunes removed the DRM restrictions on their content a while ago, so you can burn just about any movie/TV content you buy from them to a DVD or put it on a video IPOD.

Re: Who will create?

I forgot to note the positives of not having cable TV or an over-the-air signal. The things I like to watch are available for free or inexpensively online. Such as, I'm a huge fan of true-crime documentaries and PBS documentary show Frontline. My husband is addicted to 48 hours, and he watches these shows for free on the CBS website.

I can buy individual episodes for $2.99 or less from Itunes, watch the Frontline episodes for free on the PBS website, or I can buy or rent the DVD and rip it to my IPOD. Of all these choices, my least favorite is streaming the video live from a website because of the time factor - I don't really have time to park my butt in front of the computer monitor. So far I haven't downloaded anything from bittorrent, because I've been able to find everything I want to watch at a reasonable price.

There's more than enough down time for me. I'm often waiting in remote places where there's no internet connection - because of family circumstances, I spend more time than I'd like in doctors' office waiting rooms. The people around me are usually stressing out, staring at their watches, giving the receptionist dirty looks, while I'm totally involved in a documentary about Mexican street gangs that I've ripped to my video IPOD.

Going web-only wasn't by choice in my house. I got rid of the cable TV subscription about two years ago to save money. We never had an available over-the-air signal before the switch to digital.

After the change to digital, we get exactly two English-language TV channels with the digital coverter box and a huge and greatly embarrassing set of rabbit ears in the window.

I'd rather stream movies on Netflix over the internet - nothing says failure with a capital F quicker than a 40-something renter with a rabbit ears antenna taped to the glass in the living room window. (This was the only way we could get any signal at all.)